If you’ve saved a store’s products.json page, double-clicking it usually just opens a wall of text in a browser tab or a code editor - it’s raw JSON, not a document format any office program understands natively.

To actually work with the data - filter by vendor, sort by price, look up a SKU - it needs to be converted into rows and columns first. The extension does that for you, straight from the store: it fetches the JSON, flattens it, and gives you a CSV that opens straight into Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets - so you never need to save the file yourself.

Nothing is uploaded anywhere in the process - the data is read locally, in your browser, and the download happens the same way.

It’s worth knowing why the raw file looks the way it does: Shopify’s theme code reads that exact nested structure to render a storefront, so it’s optimized for a browser’s JavaScript engine rather than for a person reading it directly. Converting it is less about fixing a broken file and more about translating it for a different audience.